[Dovecot] Questions about converting maildir to mdbox.

[Henrique Fernandes]

First of all i would like to thanks Timo for the excellent job done in
dovecot.

We are using it in you prodution server with about 5 millions of emails and
it is pretty good, only a performance problens but i guess it is realated to
ocfs2 that we are using.

So lets begin:

We are using dovecot 2.0.6 with maildir in an ocfs2 partiton.

It is pretty slow access in peak time, but it is related to ocfs2 as i said
before, i am trying to mimimize the ocfs2 latancy by using mdbox. Another
problem that we have are Full backup that takes about 24h and incremental
takes about 13h

I am thinking in converting some email for testing propose, but i am
wondoring how would dovecot convert this, like if i convert all mail from
maildir to mdbox it would make many mailbox based on this seetings ? Or in
the first convert it would make a big mdbox file and after it it will rotate
by day or it would make many boxes just based on size?

mdbox_rotate_size = 5m
mdbox_rotate_interval = 1d

Well, another thing can i make rotate interval happens in a certain time of
day? end from where it takes this time ? it rotates at midnight ?

Another one!, if i lose the index files what really happens ? Sometimes in
my server the index get corrupet and as i am reading mdbox index files held
information that is not in other place. So what should i do to prevent any
possible lose of data even if i lose the indexes?

I was reading about backup restore also, but i did not get it pretty well.
With maildir we simple restore the files and the index gets rebuilt! What
should i do with mdbox ? Restore the files and the index ? But how about the
other emails that the account got after the backup, how i should merge the
multiple files and more importanet how do i merge the index files ?

Well, sorry about my english!

And Thanks alot guys!

[]'sf.rique